This week...

I'm reading

Another week where I just didn't find a lot of time to read! I did finish The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters which I loved, and then I started Sophie Green's book Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon but I am probably about a quarter of the way in...maybe. I am not sure when I will be able to get back to this book now.

The problem I have is that I have multiple blog tour books this week and I have only read one which is The Silent Resistance by Anna Normann which was really good! I am going to be feeling the pressure all this week!

I was supposed to go to three bookish events over the last week but in the end I only went to one, but it was a really good one. I went to an author talk at our Shrine of Remembrance for a non-fiction book called Survival in Singapore by Tom Trumble. It is a non fiction book about some events in WWII Singapore. After the talk we attended the Last Post ceremony which focussed on the fall of Singapore which was 84 years ago yesterday.

We were also a bit nerdy. We caught the train through the new Metro Tunnel and got out at all the new train stations for a look around on the way! It was a fun day!

I'm watching


We've pretty much only been watching the Olympics ranging from curling to ice dance to moguls and the other events that the Aussies have won medals in!

We did catch most of the 2025 Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo when it was showing on free to air TV last week. It bought back such great memories of when we were there live 18 months ago. There is a military tattoo happening in Brisbane this weekend and we gave tickets to my step daughter and her partner. I am a bit jealous that they are going although the weather isn't going to be that great. 



Life

My husband isn't one for the big gestures but we have always done something for Valentine's Day. This weekend we went to lunch at a winery which is about 15 minutes away from home. We have been meaning to try this winery ever since we moved into the area. It won't take us another 3.5 years to go there for a meal again!

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Library Love!

Us Against You by Fredrik Backmann

Weekend Cooking: The Golden Spurtle

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: January Statistics

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date, Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and the Good Book and a Cup of Tea link up hosted at Boondock Ramblings

Weekend Cooking: What We Ate On Holidays Part 3

We've been back from holidays for a couple of weeks now, so we are well and truly back into work mode. Good  job we have a holiday coming up soon!! However, I still have a few, well a lot, of things to talk about so this week I am going to talk about more of the food we had while  we were away.

So far, I have talked about the first couple of weeks (here and here), our New Year's Eve dinner, dinner at the Eiffel Tower and the street food walking tour we did in Naples.

After leaving Bayeux we headed to the Loire Valley where we stayed in a small chateaux in the town of Mer which is not far from Bloise. There we had two days of the most amazing breakfasts. Everything was local including these delicious cheeses. The host made us delicious treats every day. I would totally recommend them for the breakfast alone, but they were also super friendly and helpful and the room was lovely!

It was also quite close to the chateau at Chambord. When we went there we saw an amazing treat called a Coffee Gourmand. It was 3 small cakes/patisserie items to eat with your coffee or hot chocolate. However, the line was so long that we thought we would head to the next chateau at Chennoceaux and hope they had something similar, They did not. What I did have there was this super cute chocolate mousse house set into a pool of raspberry sauce. Yum!

I am going to skip over Paris, because I have a couple of posts in mind for Paris in July, other than to mention the dinner we had on the last night. We did a foodie walking tour in Paris and at one point the guide mentioned about having authentic couscous because of the French connection to Northern African countries. One of my favourite meals is couscous with ratatouille. And so the seed was planted to have some couscous before we moved on to Italy. Luckily there was a couscouserie right next door to the hotel!! I didn't even know such a thing existed before this!

And so to Italy. We did have some lovely meals in Italy, but we also had some just okay one. Sometimes that comes down to the choices we make  - choose  a different restaurant or a different menu item and you have very different experience! And yet some of the tastiest meals we had were very simple. For example, while on the train from the airport into Rome we had a foccacia filled with mortadella which was so good. We had that for lunch a couple of other times too

One thing we did enjoy a lot is the Italian breakfast cornetto. It looks like a croissant but iit has different textures and is usually filled with thick sweetened cream. There can be different flavours. I had one with a pistacchio cream in Alborebello that was absolutely delicious. This one was consumed sitting in a piazza in Naples on a lovely sunny morning.

In my post about the walking tour of Naples, I mentioned I was a bit surprised when the sfogliatelle was with soft pastry rather than the usual crispy pastry. I did still manage to have a couple of these at least

From Naples we drove along the Amalfi coast, and then headed to Puglia. We went via a city called Lecce. There was barely anything open in the town, but we did find a pizza place. The interesting thing is that they charged for the pizza by weight. You tell them how big a slice you want and you pay accordingly. And the pizza was great!

We did have some good pasta too! This was consumed whilst sitting outside on a piazza near our hotel in Rome. Note the vegetables! By this time in the trip I was absolutely craving vegetables!

One thing that we knew that we wanted to try while we were in Rome was their cream filled breakfast bun. You might recall my husband LOVES cream. We ended up having it with our lunch sitting down at a cafe across the road from the Circus Maximus

On the way home we spent a couple of days in Singapore. Completely different experience from Europe in terms of architecture, weather and food! Whilst there I discovered that I love Char Kway Teow noodles. We walked through the markets in the Chinese part of town and because it was very close to Chinese New Year there were lots of interesting things to look at. We tried to get into a restaurant nearr the hotel to try Chilli Crab, but couldn't get in unfortunately.

For dinner on one of the nights, we went to our third Michelin star restaurant of the trip. This one is famous for being the cheapest Michelin star restaurant. To be honest, I don't really get the hype!

We will go back to Singapore at some point. It's an eight hour flight for us but more importantly it is not a big difference in time zones. Oh, who am I kidding. I am already thinking about when we can go back to Europe despite the length of the flights or the time zones!

Weekly meals

Saturday - Steak, egg, chips and broccolini

Sunday -  Out for dinner

Monday - Zucchini and eggplant lasagne

Tuesday - Chicken teriyaki noodles stir fry

Wednesday - Pork Nachos

Thursday - Burgers

Friday - Takeaway Friday

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

Weekend Cooking: Round the World with Atlas Masterclass

A couple of months ago I shared our experience of Atlas Masterclasses. We have continued to do masterclasses everyy second week and the plan is to continue to do that for a while yet.

I am not going to go through the details of how the masterclass works because I already did that here.   I would say though that one of the things that I enjoy is that although the recipes are not necessarily normal, they are very accessible. Every week, we ask my son to cook at least one meal a week, even in the weeks that we are doing these boxes, and he seems to enjoy being the cook on these nights.

This week,  I am sharing the last three countries that we visited.

Indonesia

Satay Chicken Skewers with Rice and Pineapple Sambal

Beef Rendang, Roti and Cucumber Salad  - enjoyed this one a lot!

Mei Goreng, Tofu, Crispy Egg - not our favourite I am afraid

 Singapore

Grilled pork chops, black bean sauce and singapore noodles -This was our favourite from Singapore week

Hainanese chicken rice, chinese broccoli, ginger and spring onion sauce

Forgot to take a picture of Cauliflower, potato biryani, almond, mint, tomato

Germany

Chicken schnitzel, mustard mash, zucchini, asparagus and dill salad

Cheese kransky, warm cabbage and apple salad with pretzel and curry wurst sauce - I really enjoyed the warm cabbage and apple salad and the pretzel

Smoked pork hock, rosti and apple slaw

Next week we are doing France, and I can't wait!

This week

Saturday: Rib eye steak, baked potato and green salad

Sunday: Lasagne

Monday: Singapore noodles with chicken

Tuesday: Pork chops, mash potato, sweetcorn and green beans

Wednesday: Chicken Tikka Masala with Rice

Thursday: Chicken Schnitzel Burgers

Friday: Pizza (takeaway)

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.